No Longer Favored Son, Texans Feel ‘Bush’-Whacked By George W.

POLITICS

No Longer Favored Son, Texans Feel ‘Bush’-Whacked By George W.

By MzEll

IF YOU ASK MY TODDLER ABOUT GEORGE W. BUSH, he’ll tell you that he lives on a refrigerator magnet, and that he is a "yocky man!," his two-year-old’s Texas twang turning the ‘U’ into an ‘O.’ But in Texas, it’s not that simple.

I grew up in Midland, TX, from where Bush hails, and called it my home until I had my own family. I was also raised in the same Methodist traditions as President Bush, and am in essence a member of his extended congregation. So it’s hard for me not to feel sympathy for the man, if not for the "President," behind the public’s scorn. In the newsletter of the church I attend in South Texas, there is a permanent entry to pray for President Bush, and I do so almost every night.

Yet I’m ambivalent about Bush, as many Texans are. Four years ago while attending the local community college, I was stopped by a smart female student because I was wearing a ‘Democrat’ pin. My schoolmate’s reaction? Basically all Texans should vote for Bush because he ‘s Texan, and that Afghanistan and Iraq should just be blown up. I was aghast, embarrassed that someone so smart had such a childish response.

That down-home pride has all but disappeared for Bush. Last week I talked to a few students on that same college campus, and all were either angry or chagrinned about Bush’s job performance.

Salon’s Bill Sasserwrote about the turn against Bush in the Lone Star State. “Back in the day you couldn’t swing a dead cat around here without hitting one of those ‘W’ stickers,” he wrote. "But feelings around here started to change about a year ago, when guys started going back to Iraq for their third deployment.”

Sasser points out that more Texans have served in Bush’s wars than any other war, and that only California has sent home more dead soldiers. Even the editor of Texas Monthly, Paul Burka, who’s covered politics for 30 years and voted twice for Bush, is embarrassed by his past votes. And James Henson, a University of Texas public policy professor, said in the same article that finding Texans who admit to voting for Bush “is like trying to find people who voted for Nixon in his 1972 landslide."

My mother-in-law has voted Republican in every election since Goldwater ran for President. Even she is disappointed by Bush’s last term; she shakes her head and covers her eyes when talking about it. Last week she confessed that she just might sit this election out.

As my husband says, George W. like Coca-Cola to Texans: We still prefer Coke to Pepsi (Democrats?), it’s just this case the Coke has gone flat and rancid.

MzEll is a stay-at-home mom who writes, reads, knits, and tries to maintain sanity on a regular basis. You can read her blog at Cookiemonks.